I look something like this guy in an Hermes ad, but less dramatic. And I also emerged from the prairie, entire:
I share one trait with Michael Jackson.
Rhythm? Uh, no. No, it's not a penchant for asymmetrical glitterwear or an interest in Disney -- I have vitiligo, a disorder that causes depigmentation of the skin. Luckily, I've lived most of my life with only a pair of dime-sized white spots on my feet, in the form of a polka dot on each side of my ankles. When I was a kid, I realized the resemblance to the scar on Achilles, and it stopped bothering me.
I have way too many tchotkes. I can't help myself! But they're all so good. And I really don't dust enough ... wait, this is getting too confessional. Ah, well. I know I'm not alone in my slovenly housekeeping, right? Right?
(Note: dust)
And three anecdotes from childhood:
1. I was removed from Miss Gabor's kindergarten class one morning after drawing anatomically correct men and women picking flowers in a field, nude. Other artistic gems of the period: after being asked to decorate the class bulletin board, I produced a large composition of weeping men and women, also nude, in collage of construction paper. And to this day my mother keeps, carefully fitted into a drawer full of jewelry, a portrait I did of her head literally exploding in anger. She looks like a fire cracker or a comet. Childhood is such a volatile time.
2. My father read me The Secret Garden about seven million times, including once on a very long train trip, where we rented the caboose cabin, with beds that popped from walls and its own tiny bath. I'll never forget him reading to me in the observation car, set with glass walls, and the prairie sailing by.
3. When I was very small, just outside my bedroom (which had walls upholstered in a thick canvas in a horizontal orange stripe, with matching campaign chairs, natch) my parents kept a large cage full of house finches. How I loved those finches -- they would build nests from millet, have young and teach them how to fly. It was amazing. We had a whole colony. My dad built the cage as a present for my mother when they were first married and moved to Chicago.
When drunk, I have an odd penchant for acrobatics, alla Holiday:
I'm quite happy with my life, but if I had to live in celluloid, subject to a flickering silver light, I would choose to spend eternity here, in Jules et Jim:
Was ever anything more delicious?
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